


Lauren

by LittleMissLiesmith



Series: The Better The Lives We Lead [2]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Lauren-centric, M/M, unadulterated fluff, via a request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 09:03:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2304173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMissLiesmith/pseuds/LittleMissLiesmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>A History of Mondays</i> opens up in sophomore year for Diego, Divina, Kevin, and Lauren.</p><p>This is a story of freshman year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fall Semester

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smilodonmeow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilodonmeow/gifts).



_SEPTEMBER_

Lauren was going to school in Maine and she didn’t know _anyone_.

She was starting to wonder, honestly, what made her think getting a scholarship to boarding school was a _good idea_. Especially one so far from home. Especially when she hadn’t realized she would miss her parents after they left.

Someone tapped Lauren on the shoulder and she jumped.

“Whoops, sorry!” came an unfamiliar voice, cheerful and a little childish. “Did I scare you?”

“…Kinda,” she said warily, turning to look at the boy. His uniform was ripped and rearranged beyond standards to the outrageous and he had a sparkly gold streak in his hair that matched—was he wearing _eyeshadow_? At the very least that drew attention from his slightly-frightening black eyes.

“Sorry!” he said again. “You just looked a little lost, which is good, because so am I. I’m Kevin.” He held out a hand.

Hesitantly Lauren took it. “Lauren Mallard.”

“Nice to meet you, Lauren Mallard!”

Lauren, against her will, felt a smile form. “Nice to meet you too, Kevin.”

 

_OCTOBER_

The Halloween masquerade was Desert Bluffs Preparatory Academy’s _Big Event_ of the fall semester and Lauren and Kevin were going together, if strictly as friends.

“Help me!” she called across the dorm room to Kevin. Her roommate had already left for the ball, freeing up the tiny box for their use. “I can’t lace my dress!”

“I’ll—how did you even _manage_ that?” Kevin muttered. His hair was swept into a short French braid for the evening, his suit secondhand but artfully rearranged in a very Kevinish way. “You—I don’t even—“

Lauren grinned sheepishly. “So I’m dress-impaired. Help me!”

Somehow Kevin managed to undo the bad lacing and disentangle Lauren from the dress, then lace her back up and tie on her eyemask (black with gold glitter sparingly placed at the edges). He fixed his own mask on—a rising sun eyemask—and grinned. “Let’s rock this town.”

When they arrived at the ball, Kevin stopped dead in the doorway and fixated on one figure, a boy in a neatly tailored suit and black full-face mask with ruby fangs glittering in the light from the chandeliers. He gripped Lauren’s arm. “ _Lars_.”

“Wha—oh, is that the guy you like?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Kevin hissed. “Yes, that’s him!”

Lauren looked closer. With the full mask it was hard to tell if he was attractive or not; he had darker skin, sleek hair, and wore a pair of expensive-looking black and red stiletto heels.

“Go for it,” she said.

“Lauren, what are you _thinking_?”

“Go for it. Jump him.”

“ _Lauren_!”

“Are you staring at my brother?” came a chilly voice from behind them.

They turned to see a dark-skinned girl with a mess of curly black hair, her pink feathered mask pulled off to reveal sharp gold eyes (at least, they looked gold in the lighting; Lauren hazarded that they were really a shade of hazel). If Kevin’s crush looked anything like her, Lauren could see the appeal.

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes, you two. Why are you staring at my brother?”

Kevin glanced over his shoulder at the boy, who was now dancing, twirling across the floor. “I—I—I—“

“Kev madly fancies your brother,” Lauren said, grinning.

“ _Lauren_! Where the hell did Kev come from and, oh yeah, _shaddap_!”

“No way.”

The girl was looking at them with a bemused expression. “Wait—you fancy _Diego_?”

“Is that his name?”

“Yes, you _fancy Diego_?”

“”Erm…” Kevin gulped. “Maybe?”

Her eyes widened and she started laughing. “No way!”

“What?”

She pushed past them, grabbed Diego’s arm, and pulled him over. Halfway across the floor he saw them and began struggling, tugging at the girl and arguing—“ _Div, stoppit, stoppit, why are you--_ ”

She pushed him at Kevin. “Kevin Palmer—yes, I know who you are. This is my dear brother Diego. And he has not shut up about you for the past month and a half. So if you two could get over whatever unresolved sexual tension you’ve got going on and get to kissing quickly, that would be great.”

Kevin and Diego both stood completely still for a moment, then the latter recovered and extended an arm. “Kevin Palmer, may I have this dance?”

They glided off, leaving Laruen standing next to the girl. “Er…I’m Lauren,” she said.

“I’m Divina. Those two are dorks, aren’t they?”

Lauren grinned. “Oh, yeah. Why’d we wait so long to tag-team ‘em?”

“I dunno.” Divina flashed her a sharp smile. “You fancy anyone?”

Lauren involuntarily glanced across the room at Daniel Vega, in his usual leather jacket and a plain, mechanical-looking silver eyemask.

“Danny Vega? High aspirations. He’s a cousin of mine. Want me to set you up?”

“No, I’m fine—“

Divina was already shoving her mask back on and dragging Lauren across the room. “Relax, this’ll be fun!”

 

_NOVEMBER_

“Danny, look, I’m _sorry_ , but I promised Kevin I’d go to his place for Thanksgiving.”

Daniel pouted theatrically, swishing his leather longcoat as he turned away from her. “Lauren—“

“I made a promise, Daniel. I’ll visit your family for Christmas, how about?”

He sighed. “Fine.”

That had been two days ago; Lauren was now wishing she had taken Daniel up on his offer to visit the Vega family. As much as she had heard about that family, it would’ve been far preferable to sitting on the couch and texting him as Kevin and Cecil screamed at each other from the other room.

After a few minutes of that, Kevin stormed out and grabbed Lauren’s hand. “Lars, can we go now?”

She shut off her phone. “’Course. Where to?”

“I dunno. Back to school. Or we could spend the night out. Or we could phone Diego and ask him to buy us plane tickets to Prague, he’d totally do that for us.”

“He probably would, too.” Lauren grinned. “I dunno, let’s see how long we can last before we have to head back. Break’s only two days more anyway. Could be fun.”

Kevin smiled and dragged her along the sidewalk. “Alright then, where to first?”

“I dunno. Anywhere!”

 

_DECEMBER_

Lauren’s family was away visiting her mother’s side in Australia, having made plans when Lauren asked if she could visit Daniel’s family for the holidays. She was admittedly even more frightened of the Vegas now.

There was Ricardo, the patriarch, who happened to be the Headmaster of the Academy. And then there was Sergio, the science teacher who everyone said experimented on students in detention; at least his wife, Stella, seemed as nice as could be. They had three kids of their own and two adopted nephews, one of whom was Daniel and the other of whom was Daniel’s younger brother Samuel. The three kids were triplets, Balder, Thor, and Loki, and they seemed to rather like Lauren. Of course, she had given them cookies, so they might’ve just liked her for the treats.

There was also Luciano Silva, the music teacher, Antonio, a junior, and his sister Jezebel (still at the middle school), and Diego and Divina were over with their parents Carmen and Ketih. And that was just the side that Divina knew. There were dozens of Vegas and related families at the manor for Christmas.

Still, it was rather nice. She and Daniel took walks outside in the snow and the woods (upstate New York was much better than Baltimore for snow at Christmas), Samuel taught her how to play Mario Kart and everyone under eighteen held tournaments, swapping off the remotes between teams, Diego and Divina acted halfway decently around their family and rather less bratty than they did in daily life, and Sergio didn’t give her any clues as to whether or not he might be torturing students in detention.

So there was that.

Lauren sat on the roof ledge outside the attic room she was staying in. The whole manor was very well-kept for such a big place; presumably it had a staff of at least fifty. It was all so opulent and rich and—and—

“Lauren? You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, turning to Daniel. “This is just a bit of a culture shock for me.”

He laughed a little. “Well, you don’t have to be intimidated.” He sat next to her. “Jezebel likes to say that we all put our pants on one leg at a time, like everyone else. Except for Diego, he has people for that.”

“Diego’s a spoiled brat,” Lauren said.

“Don’t I know it.” He looked up at the stars and the softly-falling snow. “Aren’t you getting cold out here?”

“Aren’t you?” she countered.

“I don’t get cold, I’m a robot,” he deadpanned, then chuckled. “I’ve got a down jacket on under all this. You’re wearing your pajamas and a robe. Come inside.” He took her hand and helped her up, half-crawling back over to the open window and letting her in.

“It is nice here, though,” Lauren said. “Just not something I’m used to. I’m still getting used to the Academy, honestly.” She hesitated. “But I do like it.”

Daniel grinned. “Good. Because I got you a Christmas present.”

“Daniel Vega, we’ve barely been dating two months!”

“And my family has more money than we know what to do with!”

Lauren froze. “It’s not obscenely expensive, is it?”

“Er—“

“You did not, _Daniel!_ ”

“Sorry, sorry! But it’s already bought so you might as well take it.”

She laughed and playfully smacked his upper arm. “You need to ask me about this.”

“But wouldn’t that ruin the point of a present?”

“It doesn’t matter!”

 

_JANUARY_

With the excitement of Christmas season over, the snow coating the campus was now just another annoyance to be dealt with. Lauren and Divina were currently attempting to wade through it to get to the chapel.

“So,” Divina began, “did you hear about the excitement?”

“No. What’s going on?”

“Well, apparently Carlos Mendez snuck on campus the other night and set off some kind of back-alley science experiment right outside Luciano Silva’s room. Almost killed him, you know how he has his synthesia. Anyway, after that Luciano went right back around and filled Carlos’s apartment with glasses of water on the floor like a college kid. And then Carlos stuck a dozen firecrackers to go off when Luciano opened the chapel door. So now they’re in an all-out prank war.” Divina grinned. “Should be interesting.”

“Should _not_ be interesting. This could be dangerous, someone could get hurt!”

“Relax, it’s just prank war. It’ll last a month or two. How bad could it possibly be?”

Lauren tilted her head and thought that over, tracing a finger down the white-gold chain of her necklace, rubbing the little diamond charm on the end. “Point taken. C’mon, we’re gonna be late.”

They set off at a run.


	2. Spring Semester

_FEBRUARY_

“Laureeeennnn…”

Lauren looked up from her textbook at Kevin, who had collapsed half onto the library desk, eyes closed. “Yeees, Kev?”

“Don’t call me Kev. Help.”

“With?”

“Diego’s gone crazy.”

Lauren sighed. “Well, the rest of us already knew he was. Didn’t you hear he’s an eteromaniac?”

“That was a rumor. A rumor you started.”

“It _could_ be true. He likes kissing you enough.”

“But it’s _just_ kissing!” He cracked open an eye. “Diego’s eteromania isn’t the issue—“

“So you admit it.”

“Shut up! The issue is that it’s Valentine’s Day.”

“Oh, I know. Did you get him a gift?”

Kevin moaned. “Uh-huh. It’s a watch. A very nice watch.”

“And?”

“And he left a new suit on my bed with instructions to go to Tourniquet at seven and ask for the Rodriguez table.”

“Wait, what?”

“I know! It’s so expensive, I can’t possibly—“

Lauren smacked him upside the head. “You idiot, he is offering you the most expensive dinner in town and will still be thrilled with whatever gift you gave him. You could give him the ring from a Cracker Jack box and he’d shower you with kisses and gifts.”

“But—“

“But nothing. How much did that watch cost you?”

Kevin mumbled something.

“ _How much?_ ”

“A lot.”

“So you’re going to go to dinner, in your nice new suit, and you’re going to order whatever and you’re going to give Diego that watch and you are not going to act like an idiot about this. Got it?”

“Got it,” Kevin said meekly.

“Now go. It’s almost six.”

Kevin peeled himself off the table and scampered out of the library. Lauren watched him go, waited a moment to make sure he wouldn’t come back, and returned to her reading.

 

_MARCH_

“Happy Easter, everybody,” Lauren said, sitting down at the table in the dining hall and setting a basket of colorfully dyed hard-boiled eggs on the table. “Look, it worked!”

Divina gave a little cheer, Kevin peered into the basket and capered with delight, and Diego did his best not to look like he was intensely proud of himself for dying hard-boiled eggs. Daniel just smiled and squeezed Lauren’s hand.

“So what do we do with these now?” Divina asked. “I heard you hide them, but I think that’s mostly the plastic kind…”

“You guys never used Easter eggs?” Lauren asked in disbelief.

“We had Easter dinner,” said Diego. “No egg hunts.”

“I remember one,” Daniel said thoughtfully. “You two might’ve been too young to remember it, though. I barely do. I seem to recall that it ended with Stella forgetting to hard-boil the eggs before you dyed them, and then someone threw one at Sergio’s head and it cracked. We didn’t have any more Easter egg hunts after that.”

“Your family is too dysfunctional for words,” Lauren muttered. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with the eggs. We can eat them. Or make them into egg salad. Or cut out the bottom, hollow them out, and keep the shells as decorations. Or do that and then make them into egg salad.”

“What would we do with fifteen eggs worth of egg salad?” Diego asked.

“I haven’t the faintest. Make sandwiches and pass them out outside the chapel?”

That was what they ended up doing, much to Luciano Silva’s confusion and everyone else’s amusement.

That was also why they ended up in the Headmaster’s office for the third time that month.

“This is all Lauren’s fault,” Diego announced loudly.

“You’re the one who put the idea in my head!”

“You suggested egg salad!”

“You asked what we would do with it!”

“Headmaster Ricardo will see you now,” Cleopatra, the secretary, said with a bored expression.

They stood, Lauren and Diego still arguing, and headed for the office.

 

_APRIL_

“Happy April Fools Day,” Lauren greeted as she joined the rest in the common room.

“What, no pranks? Would’ve thought you’d be very into April Fool’s Day,” Diego muttered.

“Yes, well, your cousins are taking care of that well enough.” She pulled out her phone and flicked it on, showing them a little video.

“Wait—is that—“

“Yes.”

“And are those—“

“Yes.”

“Is that Luciano’s—“

“Uh-huh.”

“And Sergio is—“

“Yup. I didn’t videotape past that, but suffice to say Luciano’s reaction was…impressive. It took them nearly fifteen minutes to figure out what had happened.” She put the phone away. “Neither was very pleased. Both were…rather disgusted. And I and the six others who happened to be watching from the wings were all _very_ amused.”

“Hell, I’m very amused,” Diego muttered. “I have to give my cousin credit—he certainly knows how to frighten someone.”

“Indeed,” Daniel said. “Although I have to ask—did they—“

“Yes.”

“And they—“

“No.”

“But—“

“Yes.”

Daniel thought that over for a second and burst out laughing. “Diego, I would like to give your cousin a medal.”

 

_MAY_

May was the worst time of the year to get through. The days were either freezing cold or boiling hot; it was almost the end of the year without any holidays or breaks; and they couldn’t swim in the lake because winter had just ended a month or two ago.

This didn’t stop Daniel from dipping his feet in the lake as they sat on the banks.

“How are you doing that?” Lauren asked, sitting next to him with her legs tucked up against herself.

“I told you before, I’m a robot,” he said, wrapping an arm around her.

“Who knows the proper equation for future value of an annuity?” Divina asked no one in particular.

Diego waved a hand noncommittally. “Hell if I know. Why’d you decide to be a finance student?”

“Why’d you decide to be a Future Business Leader of America?”

“Because someday I’ll buy a corporation and own all your asses.”

“Maybe in another reality,” Lauren snorted. “You, a CEO? You would be the worst CEO. You would be an awful CEO. You would never get any work done because you’d be too busy kissing Kevin and you’d wear high heels to all the meetings.”

Diego pushed off from where he was leaning against a tree and struck a pose, one hand behind his head and the other gripping the lapel of his blazer. “Hey. I am the classiest sonuvabitch to ever wear six-inch-heels.”

“Of course you are,” Kevin cooed.

“Except when he trips and falls,” Divina muttered.

“S-shut up!” Diego stammered. “I don’t do that anymore!”

Divina rolled her eyes. “Really. Which is why you broke the heels?”

“They were old.”

“You bought them last month.”

“Last season. I did it on purpose.”

“Caesar Santiago got a video and posted it online.”

“What?!”

Kevin giggled and ruffled Diego’s hair. “Sorry, Eggo, he did. But it’s a very cute fall down the steps.”

Diego was blushing furiously, ducking his head down as he sat below the tree. “I’m going to murder Caesar Santiago.”

“Another thing that might happen in another life,” Lauren muttered. “Well, I’m just glad we’re leading this one.”

 

_JUNE_

“Call me?”

“I’ve got your email!”

“Here’s my address.”

It was the last day of term. Everyone was exchanging numbers and addresses and a dozen other pieces; Lauren and Daniel had given their goodbyes and Lauren was now waiting for her parents to arrive to pick her up and take her back to Baltimore.

Kevin was already gone, headed back into town. Diego and Divina were giving last goodbyes as their driver stood impatiently and tapped his watch.

And Daniel was waiting with them, ready to be taken back to the Vega manors out in the countryside of upstate New York, as Lauren returned to a small rowhouse with grating over the door and cracked brick walls.

And no Daniel.

But she had an address and a phone number and strict instructions to call the very _second_ she needed anything, be it reassurance or a friend to talk to or a plane ticket to New York.

And her scholarship was being renewed.

And she could get used to living like this.

So Lauren smiled as her mom pulled up in the car, and she kept smiling as she got in and began talking about her year, and she didn’t stop smiling until late that night when she went to sleep, because there were worse lives to lead than hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Personal headcanon for the story that will probably not become important is that Lauren lives in the Inner City of Baltimore, aka USA Murder Capital. I can tell you that that place is freaking terrifying--you're constantly worried you'll get shot or carjacked or something even if you've lived nearby your whole life (I have). And my image for Lauren's home is very run-down, kind of awful, cracked bricks and vines on the wall and such.


End file.
